“If narwhals are real,” I said, “then why aren’t we talking about them all the time?”

“Why aren’t you and I talking about them all the time?”

“Why isn’t everybody talking about them all the time. They’re whales with horns. That’s amazing.”

“It is,” he said. But I felt like he wasn’t getting it. My husband thinks all animals are amazing; he was a biology major.

“No,” I said, “they’re actually amazing. Like, people get all excited about unicorns and dolphins – but nobody’s talking about the fact that there are unicorn dolphins out there. . .”

By this time, I’d pulled up the “narwhal” Wikipedia entry on my phone. Which seems like a fake, honestly. I mean, it leads with an illustration of a smiling narwhal – why would a real animal have an illustration on its Wikipedia page?

Narwhals aren’t just whales with horns, by the way. They’re whales with gorgeous spiraled horns — they look like something Lisa Frank made up. They’re the sort of creatures that get drawn on the margins of pirate maps.

“If narwhals are real . . .” I said.

“They are.”

“Then what else is real?” At that moment, he could have said hippogriffs, and I would have believed him.

“Umm . . .”

“I feel so stupid,” I said.

“You’re not stupid. I can see why you were confused. It’s the sort of thing that the Internet would create if it didn’t already exist.”